1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to bottle filling devices, specifically to bottle filling devices for home made beer and other liquid carbonated beverages.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
It is well known in the home made beer (homebrew) market to utilize a specialized filler to transfer carbonated beer from a pressurized keg into a bottle for portability, gifts, entering into competitions and the like. The alternate to filling from a keg is natural carbonation in the bottle; but this leaves undesirable yeast sediment in the bottom of each bottle. Simply pouring the beer into a bottle from a tap is possible, but too much carbonation is lost from foaming leaving the beer flat. In addition, the presence of oxygen (O2) in the bottle during transfer causes staling of the beer adversely affecting the flavor and shelf life. The common solution to this is a device called a counter-pressure bottle filler (CPBF), which is very common in both the commercial bottling and homebrew industry. A typical homebrew counter-pressure bottle filler is a simplified manual version of the commercial equivalents intended for rapid sequential bottle filling. U.S. Pat. No. 5,150,740 (Yun), U.S. Pat. No. 3,757,835 (Copping), and U.S. Pat. No. 3,450,175 (Norwood) show several commercial high speed fillers. Numerous suppliers such as Foxx Equipment, MoreBeer™ and others manufacture and sell these traditional CPBF fillers. Also, many homebrewers make their own fillers. The typical process to fill a bottle utilizing a homebrew type counter-pressure bottle filler (CPBF) requires a very cumbersome process of turning several valves in a prescribed sequence in order to purge the bottle of air (O2), pressurize the bottle to the same pressure as the keg (to reduce foaming and carbonation loss), turn on the beer flow valve, gradually open the CO2 relief valve to allow beer to flow, turn the beer valve off at the correct fill level, relieve the CO2 pressure in the bottle, and remove the filler assembly, and lastly cap the bottle. If any operations are missed or done in the incorrect order, the bottle could be too foamy (lost carbonation), not at the correct fill level, inadequately purged of air or accidentally sprayed out of the bottle leaving an undesirable mess. The pressurization of the bottle is necessary to prevent foam creation (loss of carbonation) from a sudden pressure change whereby the dissolved CO2 would come out of solution and create foaming. This sudden pressure loss is due to the sharp turns from numerous fittings and elbows, in addition to the throttling nature of valves that would otherwise cause excessive foaming if the bottle was not pressurized prior to filling.